


Exactly this

by silveryogis



Category: Free!
Genre: M/M, Slight Smut, but mostly rin is a mess, dumb idiots in love, rin is a mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-30
Updated: 2013-12-30
Packaged: 2018-01-06 16:48:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1109202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveryogis/pseuds/silveryogis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rin likes Haru, a lot. He suffers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exactly this

**Author's Note:**

> originally from tumblr weee

It feels like he has no fucking idea what he’s doing.

Rin recognizes that he probably  _doesn’t_ have much of a clue what he’s doing, but  it’s not like he’s completely hopeless. Sure, whenever Nagisa teases him about having a  _big fat crush,_ it gets annoying, and when Rei starts telling him all the ‘most efficient and logical ways to go about telling someone you like them,’ he gets a little  _more_ annoyed, but mostly it’s alright, because they’re his friends and he guesses that’s what their job is.

To annoy the shit out of him.

In any case, they can’t really do that to him while he’s at school, so he’s left mostly to his own devices. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, he’s not sure. 

Telling Haru that he liked him  _seemed_ like a great idea just up until the very second he did it—and that’s always how those things went, wasn’t it—in fact, he had it all scripted out in his head when he approached him, and he was feeling pretty good about it. He was feeling  _great_ about it. There was no way, he rationalized, based on what his friends had told him and from what he himself had observed, that Haru didn’t like him  _too_ , so really, it should have gone perfectly. 

But, as these things always do, everything had just sort of…dissolved, and his hands found themselves shoved deep into his pockets and his eyes trained somewhere on the slope of Haru’s shoulder instead of his face. His confession had turned sort of… _angry_ , and really—Haru should have  _expected_ that, if he knew Rin at all.

“I’ve always liked you,” was what Haru had said back to him, without a hint of a waver in his voice. And Rin can still remember the way he leaned forward and  _kissed_ him, it’s seared into his brain and onto his mouth and he’s probably never going to be able to forget it—Haru coming forward and cupping the side of his face with one hand, just to press his lips to the corner of Rin’s mouth. 

And that was all about a week ago.

Rin lies down on his bed, staring furiously up at the bunk above him. So what does it  _mean_? Haru kissed him, yeah, but does that mean they’re  _dating_ now? What’s he supposed to do about that? Does Haru expect him to  _do_ things? Rin wonders if he’s supposed to do something romantic, like give him a bunch of flowers. And he likes that idea, he likes the idea of giving Haru things, but it also makes him grit his teeth and think that maybe he’s just better off  _not_ doing it, because Haru would probably think flowers were stupid. Rin can hear his voice in his head— _I can’t swim in these._

So they kissed, once. Rin has no idea what he’s supposed to do with that.

Crossing his arms behind his head, he stares at his phone, where it’s lying screen down, not vibrating. Not doing anything. That’s pretty stupid of it. Rin tries not to stare at it, but he’s  _bad_ at not waiting for it to go off, because he  _wants_ Haru to text him. He wants him to, and he can feel himself getting mad that he hasn’t, even though—there’s no reason for him to be texting him, is there? 

Rin sighs. Yeah, he’s a mess.

Maybe he should just text him first.

Giving in, Rin angrily picks up the phone and starts thinking about what he even wants to say to him, when he looks at the phone, and is—that’s not his background is it?

“Senpai,” Nitori’s voice floats down from the top bunk. “Um, I think I have your phone, instead of mine. You have a text from two hours ago…”

“ _Goddamnit!”_

_*_

Rin can’t even tell if he and Haru are on a date, or not.

It sort of feels like a date, in the way that it’s just the two of them. And movies, movies are things dating people go to. But Haru had prefaced his invitation with saying that Makoto wouldn’t want to go, because the movie was scary and he didn’t like scary movies, and he was pretty sure Nagisa and Rei had already seen it, and they wouldn’t want to go  _again._ So Rin is pretty sure he was only there because Haru had no other option, and he wants to be mad about that, but it’s hard when Haru  _looks_ the way he does.

Cute.

As the movie’s going on, Rin glances at him. Haru is, as a person who is at the movies usually was, actually watching the movie. Truth be told, Rin has done a great deal more  _Haru_ watching than  _movie_ watching, namely because he’s looking for those secret moments when Haru iss looking at  _him,_ but all that really ends up happening is Haru realizing, and asking him in a quiet voice if he’s scared.

“No!” Rin protests, a little too loudly for the theater. “This movie isn’t even that scary, anyway.”

Haru holds out his hand. “You can hold my hand, if you’re scared.” His face is extremely serious, but there’s also the hint of a small blush high on his cheeks. Rin grumbles. Is that what he wants, to hold hands? What the hell is his  _game?_

But he does, he puts his palm flush with his, and when their fingers tangle, Rin has to bite down on his cheek to keep the red off his face.

He’s pretty sure it doesn’t work.

He loves the feeling of holding his hand so much, he stops focusing on the movie altogether, and only focuses on the way that Haru’s thumb moves back and forth across the back of his hand. It feels like he’s suddenly over sensitive to everything he does, to every little shift he makes in the small movie theater seat, to every time he yawns or uncrosses his legs to recross them again. Rin moves around a lot more; he’s bad at sitting still for long periods of time. Haru squeezes his hand.

“Stop moving,” he says to him. “I’m trying to watch the movie.”

*

About another week goes by, and even though it’s finally summer, Rin still feels like he has no grasp of the situation. He goes on more  _sort of_   _dates_  with Haru, and after each one, he leaves him by his doorway wondering if he’s supposed to go in for the kill, or not. Every time, Haru just keeps his eyes on him, his face unmoving, the hint of a small smile on his face. And every time, Haru kisses the corner of his mouth, softly, before he pulls back and says goodbye. The door always closes, and Rin is left standing there, blushing angrily, because—because kissing him is supposed to be  _his_ job, right? He’s the one taking Haru on all these goddamned dates. And he hasn’t even kissed him first yet! That feels ridiculous, and stupid. 

He likes Haru  _so_  much.

He’s always liked him, really. When he was in Australia, he still thought about him; maybe not constantly, but he was always humming in the back of his mind, like,  _I wonder how Nanase is doing in his swim club,_ or,  _this class is so awful, I bet Haru would have hated it too,_ or even sometimes,  _I wonder if they’ve found a fourth person for their relay._

Rin remembers hoping that they did find that fourth person. He  _hopes_ that’s what he wanted, at least, before everything else happened.

But Haru, Haru was always the person he thought about, at the end of the day. And now it’s evolved into something stronger; Rin doesn’t just want him  _close_ , he wants to hold his hand and push his hands through his hair and he wants to put his teeth on his mouth. He wants to fall asleep wrapped in his limbs with his head tucked into the groove connected his shoulder and his neck; he wants Haru between his legs, kissing his thighs. He wants Haru to love him as much as he does, and he wants him to be just as much of a mess as he is.

And maybe he is. Maybe it’s just harder to tell, with him.

Rin pushes some stray hair out of his face and sits up in his bed. He looks at the clock. It’s nearly three in the morning, but he can’t get Haru out of his head, and if it’s three and the morning and he can’t get him out of his head, then he figures that he’s probably meant to be there, and he’s meant to be doing something about it.

So Rin gets up, throws a hoodie on, and leaves his house to go do something about it.

*

“Hey.”

Rin knows it’s a little late for something like this, yeah, but Rin is bored and antsy and in love. So he’s here, hair tousled, slightly out of breath like he’d run the whole way (and that’s exactly what he had done). 

As weird as all of it is, Haru just blinks at him, rubs at his eyes with the heel of his hand. “Rin?” His voice is groggy and cracked with sleep. “What are…”

Rin’s heart pounds aggressively in his chest, beating against his ribs like it’s trying to bust free from something, and he doesn’t even give Haru the chance to finish asking him what he’s doing before he surges forward and puts his hands on either side of his face. Rin kisses him, _hard,_ his nose pushed right next to his where he’s pretty sure it belongs.

_There._

When he pulls back, his lips parted, breath rushing angrily in and out of his lungs, Haru flicks his eyes back up to his, half out of breath, looking at him like he either can’t believe what had just happened, or like he was half  _expecting_ it to happen, and he just wasn’t prepared. Rin can’t tell. He doesn’t know if it matters.

There’s a light touch on his wrists, and Rin realizes that Haru has circled his fingers around them. “It’s…three in the morning.” It almost feels like he’s going to pull his hands way, but he doesn’t. Rather, it’s like he’s holding him there, like he thinks Rin might just run away from him (which would be stupid, that would be _stupid_ ). Rin licks over his lips a little.

“It couldn’t wait,” he says, their noses brushing together again. And he’s starting to feel like a bit on an idiot again, so he coughs and straightens his neck, puts on a haughty tone that he doesn’t really mean, and that he knows Haru will understand he doesn’t really mean either. “You were probably thinking about me anyway, huh?”

The answer Haru gives him is quiet and straightforward. “I was,” he says, an answer Rin should have been prepared to expect. There’s a pause, and the two of them just take a moment to look at each other, almost like neither of them can really believe it’s taken them  _this long,_ but then Haru pulls Rin’s hands down to rest on his hips, and slides his own hands around his face. Rin turns red. 

They kiss again, but this time it’s not a  _hard_ kiss, it’s a soft one, like it’s not three in the morning and Rin isn’t standing in his doorway with the door thrown open and with moonlight spilling all over the floorboards. Keeping his hands on Haru’s waist, Rin pulls himself a little closer and breathes, mesmerized by the way Haru smells and the way he feels kissing him, really  _properly_ kissing him. 

It starts off slow, but the thing about Rin is that he’s been in love with Haru for a  _very long time_ , and he’s still going just a little bit crazy, so he pushes harder and kisses him harder, squeezes his sides and groans into his throat. Arms circle around his neck, and he’s being pulled in closer, he’s getting dragged further into Haru’s house until his feet slip against the carpet and Haru’s ankles knock back against the bottom of the couch in his living room. Opening his mouth, he feels Haru’s tongue slide against his bottom lip and he groans a little at that—only Haru could possibly feel as good as this, only  _Haru_ could make him feel  _like_ this—stronger and more vulnerable all at the same time, like he’s giving in to something that’s only going to make him so, so much better. And this is, this is making him better. He knows it is, he can feel it with every roll of Haru’s hips under his, with the way hands drag push up under his shirt and drag down his heaving chest. 

He feels whole. He feels  _complete._

And he feels less like a mess, and more like this is the only thing he knows for sure that he wants.

*

Rin wakes up exactly the way he wants to.

He drags his forehead against Haru’s chest, and just listens to the way his heart beats, for a long time. 

Yeah, this is  _exactly_  what he wanted.

Exactly this.


End file.
